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by Etienne Wenger[Published in the "Systems Thinker," June
1998]
You are a claims processor working for a large insurance company. You
are good at what you do, but although you know where your paycheck comes
from, the corporation mainly remains an abstraction for you. The group you
actually work for is a relatively small community of people who share your
working conditions. It is with this group that you learn the intricacies
of your job, explore the meaning of your work, construct an image of the
company, and develop a sense of yourself as a worker.
You are an engineer working on two projects within your business unit.
These are demanding projects and you give them your best. You respect your
teammates and are accountable to your project managers. But when you face
a problem that stretches your knowledge, you turn to people like Jake,
Sylvia, and Robert. Even though they work on their own projects in other
business units, they are your real colleagues. You all go back many years.
They understand the issues you face and will explore new ideas with you.
And even Julie, who now works for one of your suppliers, is only a phone
call away. These are the people with whom you can discuss the latest
developments in the field and troubleshoot each other's most difficult
design challenges. If only you had more time for these kinds of
interactions.
You are a CEO and, of course, you are responsible for the company as a
whole. You take care of the big picture. But you have to admit that for
you, too, the company is mostly an abstraction: names, numbers, processes,
strategies, markets, spreadsheets. Sure, you occasionally take tours of
the facilities, but on a day-to-day basis, you live among your peers–your
direct reports with whom you interact in running the company, some board
members, and other executives with whom you play golf and discuss a
variety of issues.
We now recognize knowledge as a key source of competitive advantage in
the business world, but we still have little understanding of how to
create and leverage it in practice. Traditional knowledge management
approaches attempt to capture existing knowledge within formal systems,
such as databases. Yet systematically addressing the kind of dynamic
"knowing" that makes a difference in practice requires the participation
of people who are fully engaged in the process of creating,
refining, communicating, and using knowledge.
We frequently say that people are an organization's most important
resource. Yet we seldom understand this truism in terms of the communities
through which individuals develop and share the capacity to create and use
knowledge. Even when people work for large organizations, they learn
through their participation in more specific communities made up of people
with whom they interact on a regular basis. These "communities of
practice" are mostly informal and distinct from organizational units.
However, they are a company's most versatile and dynamic knowledge
resource and form the basis of an organization's ability to know and
learn.
Defining Communities of Practice
Communities of practice are everywhere. We all belong to a number of
them–at work, at school, at home, in our hobbies. Some have a name, some
don't. We are core members of some and we belong to others more
peripherally. You may be a member of a band, or you may just come to
rehearsals to hang around with the group. You may lead a group of
consultants who specialize in telecommunication strategies, or you may
just stay in touch to keep informed about developments in the field. Or
you may have just joined a community and are still trying to find your
place in it. Whatever form our participation takes, most of us are
familiar with the experience of belonging to a community of practice.
Members of a community are informally bound by what they do
together–from engaging in lunchtime discussions to solving
difficult problems–and by what they have learned through their mutual
engagement in these activities. A community of practice is thus different
from a community of interest or a geographical community, neither of which
implies a shared practice. A community of practice defines itself along
three dimensions:
- What it is about – its joint enterprise as understood
and continually renegotiated by its members
- How it functionsmutual engagement that bind members
together into a social entity
- What capability it has produced – the shared
repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities,
artifacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that members have developed over
time.
Communities of practice also move through various stages of development
characterized by different levels of interaction among the members and
different kinds of activities (see "Stages of Development").
Communities of practice develop around things that matter to people. As
a result, their practices reflect the members' own understanding of what
is important. Obviously, outside constraints or directives can influence
this understanding, but even then, members develop practices that are
their own response to these external influences. Even when a community's
actions conform to an external mandate, it is the community–not the
mandate–that produces the practice. In this sense, communities of practice
are fundamentally self-organizing systems.
Communities of Practice in Organizations
Communities of practice exist in any organization. Because membership
is based on participation rather than on official status, these
communities are not bound by organizational affiliations; they can span
institutional structures and hierarchies. They can be found:
- Within businesses: Communities of practice arise as people
address recurring sets of problems together. So claims processors within
an office form communities of practice to deal with the constant flow of
information they need to process. By participating in such a communal
memory, they can do the job without having to remember everything
themselves.
- Across business units: Important knowledge is often
distributed in different business units. People who work in
cross-functional teams thus form communities of practice to keep in
touch with their peers in various parts of the company and maintain
their expertise. When communities of practice cut across business units,
they can develop strategic perspectives that transcend the fragmentation
of product lines. For instance, a community of practice may propose a
plan for equipment purchase that no one business unit could have come up
with on its own.
- Across company boundaries: In some cases, communities of
practice become useful by crossing organizational boundaries. For
instance, in fast-moving industries, engineers who work for suppliers
and buyers may form a community of practice to keep up with constant
technological changes.
Communities of practice are not a new kind of organizational unit;
rather, they are a different cut on the organization's
structure–one that emphasizes the learning that people have done together
rather than the unit they report to, the project they are working on, or
the people they know. Communities of practice differ from other kinds of
groups found in organizations in the way they define their enterprise,
exist over time, and set their boundaries:
- A community of practice is different from a business or
functional unit in that it defines itself in the doing, as members
develop among themselves their own understanding of what their practice
is about. This living process results in a much richer definition than a
mere institutional charter. As a consequence, the boundaries of a
community of practice are more flexible than those of an
organizational unit. The membership involves whoever participates
in and contributes to the practice. People can participate in different
ways and to different degrees. This permeable periphery creates many
opportunities for learning, as outsiders and newcomers learn the
practice in concrete terms, and core members gain new insights from
contacts with less-engaged participants.
- A community of practice is different from a team in that the
shared learning and interest of its members are what keep it together.
It is defined by knowledge rather than by task, and exists because
participation has value to its members. A community of practice's
life cycle is determined by the value it provides to its members,
not by an institutional schedule. It does not appear the minute a
project is started and does not disappear with the end of a task. It
takes a while to come into being and may live long after a project is
completed or an official team has disbanded.
- A community of practice is different from a network in the
sense that it is "about" something; it is not just a set of
relationships. It has an identity as a community, and thus shapes the
identities of its members. A community of practice exists because
it produces a shared practice as members engage in a collective process
of learning.
People belong to communities of practice at the same time as they
belong to other organizational structures. In their business units, they
shape the organization. In their teams, they take care of projects. In
their networks, they form relationships. And in their communities of
practice, they develop the knowledge that lets them do these other tasks.
This informal fabric of communities and shared practices makes the
official organization effective and, indeed, possible.
Communities of practice have different relationships with the official
organization. The table "Relationships to Official Organization" shows
different degrees of institutional involvement, but it does not imply that
some relations are better or more advanced than others. Rather,
these distinctions are useful because they draw attention to the different
issues that can arise based on the kind of interaction between the
community of practice and the organization as a whole.
Relationships to Official Organization
Relationship |
Definition |
Challenges typical of the relationship |
Unrecognized |
Invisible to the organization and sometimes even to members
themselves |
Lack of reflexivity, awareness of value and of
limitation |
Bootlegged |
Only visible informally to a circle of people in the
know |
Getting resources, having an impact, keeping
hidden |
Legitimized |
Officially sanctioned as a valuable entity |
Scrutiny, over-management, new demands |
Strategic |
Widely recognized as central to the organization's
success |
Short-term pressures, blindness of success, smugness, elitism,
exclusion |
Transformative |
Capable of redefining its environment and the direction of the
organization |
Relating to the rest of the organization, acceptance, managing
boundaries |
Importance of Communities to Organizations
Communities of practice are important to the functioning of any
organization, but they become crucial to those that recognize knowledge as
a key asset. From this perspective, an effective organization comprises a
constellation of interconnected communities of practice, each dealing with
specific aspects of the company's competency–from the peculiarities of a
long-standing client, to manufacturing safety, to esoteric technical
inventions. Knowledge is created, shared, organized, revised, and passed
on within and among these communities. In a deep sense, it is by these
communities that knowledge is "owned" in practice.
Communities of practice fulfill a number of functions with respect to
the creation, accumulation, and diffusion of knowledge in an
organization:
- They are nodes for the exchange and interpretation of
information. Because members have a shared understanding, they know
what is relevant to communicate and how to present information in useful
ways. As a consequence, a community of practice that spreads
throughout an organization is an ideal channel for moving
information, such as best practices, tips, or feedback, across
organizational boundaries.
- They can retain knowledge in "living" ways, unlike a database
or a manual. Even when they routinize certain tasks and processes, they
can do so in a manner that responds to local circumstances and thus is
useful to practitioners. Communities of practice preserve the tacit
aspects of knowledge that formal systems cannot capture. For this
reason, they are ideal for initiating newcomers into a practice.
- They can steward competencies to keep the organization at the
cutting edge. Members of these groups discuss novel ideas, work together
on problems, and keep up with developments inside and outside a firm.
When a community commits to being on the forefront of a field, members
distribute responsibility for keeping up with or pushing new
developments. This collaborative inquiry makes membership valuable,
because people invest their professional identities in being part of a
dynamic, forward-looking community.
- They provide homes for identities. They are not as temporary
as teams, and unlike business units, they are organized around what
matters to their members. Identity is important because, in a sea of
information, it helps us sort out what we pay attention to, what we
participate in, and what we stay away from. Having a sense of
identity is a crucial aspect of learning in organizations.
Consider the annual computer drop at a semiconductor company that
designs both analog and digital circuits. The computer drop became a
ritual by which the analog community asserted its identity. Once a year,
their hero would climb the highest building on the company's campus and
drop a computer, to the great satisfaction of his peers in the analog
gang. The corporate world is full of these displays of identity, which
manifest themselves in the jargon people use, the clothes they wear, and
the remarks they make. If companies want to benefit from people's
creativity, they must support communities as a way to help them develop
their identities.
Communities of practice structure an organization's learning potential
in two ways: through the knowledge they develop at their core and
through interactions at their boundaries. Like any asset, these
communities can become liabilities if their own expertise becomes insular.
It is therefore important to pay as much attention to the boundaries of
communities of practice as to their core, and to make sure that there is
enough activity at these boundaries to renew learning. For while the core
is the center of expertise, radically new insights often arise at the
boundary between communities. Communities of practice truly become
organizational assets when their core and their boundaries are active in
complementary ways.
To develop the capacity to create and retain knowledge, organizations
must understand the processes by which these learning communities evolve
and interact. We need to build organizational and technological
infrastructures that do not dismiss or impede these processes, but rather
recognize, support, and leverage them.
Just because communities of practice arise naturally does not mean that
organizations can't do anything to influence their development. Most
communities of practice exist whether or not the organization recognizes
them. Many are best left alone–some might actually wither under the
institutional spotlight. And some may actually need to be carefully seeded
and nurtured. But a good number will benefit from some attention, as long
as this attention does not smother their self-organizing drive.
Whether these communities arise spontaneously or come together through
seeding and nurturing, their development ultimately depends on internal
leadership. Certainly, in order to legitimize the community as a place for
sharing and creating knowledge, recognized experts need to be involved in
some way, even if they don't do much of the work. But internal leadership
is more diverse and distributed. It can take many forms:
- The inspirational leadership provided by thought leaders and
recognized experts
- The day-to-day leadership provided by those who organize
activities
- The classificatory leadership provided by those who collect
and organize information in order to document practices
- The interpersonal leadership provided by those who weave the
community's social fabric
- The boundary leadership provided by those who connect the
community to other communities
- The institutional leadership provided by those who maintain
links with other organizational constituencies, in particular the
official hierarchy
- The cutting-edge leadership provided by those who shepherd
"out-of-the-box" initiatives.
These roles may be formal or informal, and may be concentrated in a
core group or more widely distributed. But in all cases, leadership must
have intrinsic legitimacy in the community. To be effective, therefore,
managers and others must work with communities of practice from the
inside rather than merely attempt to design them or manipulate them
from the outside. Nurturing communities of practice in
organizations includes:
Legitimizing participation. Organizations can support
communities of practice by recognizing the work of sustaining them; by
giving members the time to participate in activities; and by creating an
environment in which the value communities bring is acknowledged. To this
end, it is important to have an institutional discourse that includes this
less-recognized dimension of organizational life. Merely introducing the
term "communities of practice" into an organization's vocabulary can have
a positive effect by giving people an opportunity to talk about how their
participation in these groups contributes to the organization as a
whole.
Negotiating their strategic context. In what Richard McDermott
calls "double-knit organizations," people work in teams for projects but
belong to longer-lived communities of practice for maintaining their
expertise. The value of team-based projects that deliver tangible products
is easily recognized, but it is also easy to overlook the potential cost
of their short-term focus. The learning that communities of practice share
is just as critical, but its longer-term value is more subtle to
appreciate. Organizations must therefore develop a clear sense of how
knowledge is linked to business strategies and use this understanding to
help communities of practice articulate their strategic value. This
involves a process of negotiation that goes both ways. It includes
understanding what knowledge–and therefore what practices–a given strategy
requires. Conversely, it also includes paying attention to what emergent
communities of practice indicate with regard to potential strategic
directions.
Being attuned to real practices. To be successful,
organizations must leverage existing practices. For instance, when the
customer service function of a large corporation decided to combine
service, sales, and repairs under the same 800 number, researchers from
the Institute for Research on Learning discovered that people were already
learning from each other on the job while answering phone calls. They then
instituted a learning strategy for combining the three functions that took
advantage of this existing practice. By leveraging what they were already
doing, workers achieved competency in the three areas much faster than
they would have through traditional training. More generally, the
knowledge that companies need is usually already present in some form, and
the best place to start is to foster the formation of communities of
practice that leverage the potential that already exists.
Fine-tuning the organization. Many elements in an
organizational environment can foster or inhibit communities of practice,
including management interest, reward systems, work processes, corporate
culture, and company policies. These factors rarely determine whether
people form communities of practice, but they can facilitate or hinder
participation. For example, issues of compensation and recognition often
come up. Because communities of practice must be self-organizing to learn
effectively and because participation must be intrinsically
self-sustaining, it is tricky to use reward systems as a way to manipulate
behavior or micro-manage the community. But organizations shouldn't ignore
the issue of reward and recognition altogether; rather, they need to adapt
reward systems to support participation in learning communities, for
instance, by including community activities and leadership in performance
review discussions. Managers also need to make sure that existing
compensation systems do not inadvertently penalize the work involved in
building communities.
Providing support. Communities of practice are mostly
self-sufficient, but they can benefit from some resources, such as outside
experts, travel, meeting facilities, and communications technology. A
companywide team assigned to nurture community development can help
address these needs. This team typically
- provides guidance and resources when needed
- helps communities connect their agenda to business strategies
- encourages them to move forward with their agenda and remain
focused on the cutting edge
- makes sure they include all the right people
- helps them create links to other communities
Such a team can also help identify and eliminate barriers to
participation in the structure or culture of the overall organization; for
instance, conflicts between short-term demands on people's time and the
need to participate in learning communities. In addition, just the
existence of such a team sends the message that the organization values
the work and initiative of communities of practice.
The Art of Balancing Design and Emergence
Communities of practice do not usually require heavy institutional
infrastructures, but their members do need time and space to collaborate.
They do not require much management, but they can use leadership. They
self-organize, but they flourish when their learning fits with their
organizational environment. The art is to help such communities find
resources and connections without overwhelming them with organizational
meddling. This need for balance reflects the following paradox: No
community can fully design the learning of another; but conversely no
community can fully design its own learning.
This article reflects ideas and text co-created for presentations with
my colleagues Richard McDermott of McDermott & Co., George Por of the
Community Intelligence Labs, Bill Snyder of the Social Capital Group, and
Susan Stucky of the Institute for Research on Learning. Thanks to all of
them for their personal and intellectual companionship.
Biographical note
Dr. Etienne Wenger is a globally recognized thought leader in the field
of learning theory and its application to business. A pioneer of the
"community of practice" research and author of Communities of Practice:
Learning, Meaning, and Identity (Cambridge University Press, 1998), he
helps organizations apply these ideas through consulting, workshops, and
public speaking.
Sidebar:
Different members of an organization can take actions in their
own domains to support communities of practice and maximize the
benefits they can provide:
- Line managers must make sure that people are able to
participate in the right communities of practice so they sustain
the expertise they need to contribute to projects.
- Knowledge managers must go beyond creating
informational repositories that take knowledge to be a "thing,"
toward supporting the whole social and technical ecology in which
knowledge is retained and created.
- Training departments must move the focus from training
initiatives that extract knowledge out of practice to
learning initiatives that leverage the learning potential inherent
in practice.
- Strategists must find ways to create two-way
connections between communities of practice and organizational
strategies.
- Change managers must help build new practices and
communities to bring about changes that will make a constructive
difference.
- Accountants must learn to recognize the capital
generated when communities of practice increase an organization's
learning potential.
- Facilities managers must understand the ways in which
their designs support or hinder the development of communities of
practice.
- Work process designers must devise process improvement
systems that thrive on, rather than substitute for, engaged
communities of practice.
© Etienne Wenger, 1998 |
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